Students looking to go into the growing field of artificial intelligence can now turn to Adelphi.
The degree, which students will be able to officially begin taking classes to earn at the start of the fall 2025 semester, will consist of mathematics, statistics, and computer science courses, as well as three state-of-the-art courses in artificial intelligence, said Kees Leune, associate professor and chair of mathematics and computer science at Adelphi University. Leune will serve as a program director of the new AI degree.
There are fewer than two dozen undergraduate degrees in artificial intelligence offered across the country.
“It is a new degree, but not necessarily a new discipline,” Leune said. “Artificial intelligence is a field of study that has been around since the 1940s, so it’s not necessarily something that we have not seen before or had done before.”
Leune said the majority of the courses in Adelphi’s AI major will include those the university already offers in computer science and mathematics departments, and the moment all are planned to be taught by current Adelphi professors.
The three new state-of-the-art AI courses that will be developed specifically for the major will be taken by students in the final two or three semesters, Leune said. He expects the university to begin offering them during the fall 2026 semester and for the first few specialized courses to focus on computer vision, new technologies and generative AI, though topics for the first set are not yet finalized. State-of-the-art courses will likely be updated at least every three to five years, he added.
Leune emphasized that the degree will be focused on teaching students how the algorithms behind artificial intelligence and machine learning work are written, designed, built and tested. Students will also be learning ethics associated with using AI, how to effectively communicate how the algorithms work to the general public, and how to adopt new developments in AI technology that are made after they graduate.
Students graduating with the degree would be primed to hold jobs as AI engineers as well as software, web, and app developers, and other roles in mathematics, statistics, and computer science, Leune said.
Both incoming freshmen and current students are eligible to move into the course of study, Leune added. Existing students can apply to switch into the major now and begin registering for courses on April 4, though they will not officially begin studying the discipline until the fall.
Though Leune understands that some people may be nervous about the continued adoption and acceptance of AI into society, he said that was all the more reason to meet the moment with higher education degrees in the field.
“It’s a tool,” Leune said of AI. “And every time we can make a tool, or use a tool to make our lives easier and better, we should use that tool responsibly. AI is just another tool. It is going fast, it is scary, but that is all the more reason to educate people and to teach people what the right way to do things is.”
